Why do the points for the turn-in "collection" decay?

Stratics Veteran

Not exactly a game-breaking issue, but it would have been interesting to see how many points each shard could get in their turn-in "collection" by the end of the turn-in. Unfortunately, I noticed that when I turned in my stuff for Phase I on Atlantic, we were around 43,000,000+, and just now I wandered by and we're down to 38,000,000+, which means the points are decaying. You'd think that if they can adjust the decay rate on the Moonglow Zoo, that it should have been simple to set the decay rate on the turn-in "collection" to 0.

Stratics Veteran

Well, the thing with the regular collections are that they are "Community Collections." The idea was that the community on a shard would come together and contribute to the collections so that the points would stay high enough that the collections would stay decorated.

Unfortunately, in actual implementation, the collections are just glorified vending machines, and don't promote community at all.

The real mystery here is why the turn-in "collection" has decaying points and, now that I look at it again, Tiers?! They could've done it like they did the Britain Invasion and kept track of each shard's progress, but alas, it apparently was not meant to be.

Stratics Veteran

Cooperative Collections were a good idea in theory but they lacked one thing: a reason to keep contributing. Once you have all your rewards, why ever bother donating? If each collection had some special bonus that it gave to all players, then you would keep it up. For example if you keep up the Vesper Museum all houses on the shard get a 5% storage bonus. If you keep up the zoo all pets get a 5% hit point bonus. That would make players want to try and keep them up.

There would probably even be player groups/guilds that would dedicate themselves to keeping up the collections if there was a benefit to the entire shard.

just a stab in the dark but perhaps they aren't decaying but are actually being redeemed. people have collected enough points and have now started getting their rewards? haven't redeemed anything myself yet so haven't tested this possibility.

Cooperative Collections were a good idea in theory but they lacked one thing: a reason to keep contributing. Once you have all your rewards, why ever bother donating? If each collection had some special bonus that it gave to all players, then you would keep it up. For example if you keep up the Vesper Museum all houses on the shard get a 5% storage bonus. If you keep up the zoo all pets get a 5% hit point bonus. That would make players want to try and keep them up.

There would probably even be player groups/guilds that would dedicate themselves to keeping up the collections if there was a benefit to the entire shard.

Cooperative Collections were a good idea in theory but they lacked one thing: a reason to keep contributing. Once you have all your rewards, why ever bother donating? If each collection had some special bonus that it gave to all players, then you would keep it up. For example if you keep up the Vesper Museum all houses on the shard get a 5% storage bonus. If you keep up the zoo all pets get a 5% hit point bonus. That would make players want to try and keep them up.

There would probably even be player groups/guilds that would dedicate themselves to keeping up the collections if there was a benefit to the entire shard.

Click to expand...

OR.... 1 extra stable slot/character, that would rock!

Click to expand...

But what if you lost the top tier and everyone lost their extra storage or stable slot. Would they just lose their stuff/pet?

Just like the collections themselves, this is a good idea in theory. In practice it probably wouldn't work

Not exactly a game-breaking issue, but it would have been interesting to see how many points each shard could get in their turn-in "collection" by the end of the turn-in. Unfortunately, I noticed that when I turned in my stuff for Phase I on Atlantic, we were around 43,000,000+, and just now I wandered by and we're down to 38,000,000+, which means the points are decaying. You'd think that if they can adjust the decay rate on the Moonglow Zoo, that it should have been simple to set the decay rate on the turn-in "collection" to 0.

Oh well. Maybe next time.

Click to expand...

Object Oriented Programming.

The superclass and class objects contain the memory pointers and calls to the methods that are invoked for the community collections, and included in the definitions of the class objects are the rules for decay.

When the Dev team invoked an instance of the class object of Community Collections for "Clean up Britania", the new instance of the object inherited the traints from the class and superclass objects.

The superclass and class objects contain the memory pointers and calls to the methods that are invoked for the community collections, and included in the definitions of the class objects are the rules for decay.

When the Dev team invoked an instance of the class object of Community Collections for "Clean up Britania", the new instance of the object inherited the traints from the class and superclass objects.

Click to expand...

So... what you are saying is that the turn-in is a copy of the normal collections so that's why it decays?

But what if you lost the top tier and everyone lost their extra storage or stable slot. Would they just lose their stuff/pet?

Just like the collections themselves, this is a good idea in theory. In practice it probably wouldn't work

Click to expand...

Actually, as a "seed" it wasn't all that bad a thought ... with a re-write(strike over, ADDED)

Cooperative Collections were a good idea in theory but they lacked one thing: a reason to keep contributing. Once you have all your rewards, why ever bother donating? If each collection had some special bonus that it gave to all PARTICIPATING players, then you THEY would keep it up. For example if youTHEY keep up the Vesper Museum all PARTICIPANTS houses on the shard get a 5% storage bonus. If youTHEY keep up the zoo all PARTICIPANTS pets get a 5% hit point bonus. That would make PARTICIPATING players want to try and keep them up.

There would THEN probably LIKELY even be player groups/guilds that would dedicate themselves to keeping up the collections if there was a benefit to the entire shard. FOR THEM
-------------
See? much better ... Joining in could be enabled through a "dot system" like the virtues ... and, like the virtues .... "coasting" would have its cost ... less dots less bene's ... on an >individual< basis ... individual loses dots ... loses bene's .. LIKE the virtue sys.

could even toss in a "scaling" method ...for the donations ... where self earned (not bought/given/found) gives max dots (for solo/friendless/unguilded) and bought/given/found items "lesser" dot value ... BUT "a/any group" could do a collection for new joiners ...(old "barn raising" philosophy) ... ie. bene /not requirement/ for community actions.

Stratics Veteran

The superclass and class objects contain the memory pointers and calls to the methods that are invoked for the community collections, and included in the definitions of the class objects are the rules for decay.

When the Dev team invoked an instance of the class object of Community Collections for "Clean up Britania", the new instance of the object inherited the traints from the class and superclass objects.

Click to expand...

Congratulations. You know something about programming and have managed to prove it on the Intertubes with an informative forum post, thus improving your self-esteem and making you an unstoppable juggernaut of inestimable wisdom and reknown.

Sadly, though, if you had actually read the post of mine that you quoted, you would have seen my point about the Moonglow Zoo Collection. The fact that they have changed the decay rate on that collection proves that they can set the decay rate for all collections individually, meaning that they could have set the decay rate for the turn-in "collection" to 0.

It doesn't matter if they're using OOP, functional programming, extreme programming, COBOL, Boo, Fortran, Common Lisp, punch cards, vacuum tubes, or a team of 400 Chinese teenagers that they've locked in the basement and forced to memorize numbers. Programming methodology and style are completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.

It's kind of like information hiding (and with your complete mastery of all things programming, I'm sure that you know what that is): We don't need to know how they can set the decay rate for each collection individually to whatever they want, just that they have shown that they can set the decay rate for each collection individually to whatever they want, and thus they could have set it to 0 for the turn-in.

When UO has hired programmers in the past they have posted the skill requirments for the job including the specific OS and programming languages used.

No assumptions being made.

Click to expand...

Except the assumption that every item on the list was completely relevant.
Just because a job application "requires" something, doesn't mean the job itself will. The requirement of OOP experience could just be means of narrowing down the applicants to those with experience with good coding practices.

Stratics is the oldest continually running MMORPG Fansite on the Internet. Founded in 1997 Stratics has served the Ultima Online Community for 18 years. We strive to provide the most complete social experience for Ultima Online players.